The good news is we can, and we don’t have to do it alone

In the 6th episode of our podcast Maryam Pasha and I sit down with Jon Alexander to share the 5 steps to action that communities across the UK say help create local change that could spread.

Give it a listen here:

Apple: Click here

Click here to listen on Apple

Spotify: Listen here:

FIRST: Check out what’s happening near you?

Empowered community action is already happening almost everywhere! Before we get to the list - it’s likely you don’t even need to start anything, as someone may have already done it. Use our postcode search tool to find 5 examples of systemically change making collective action within 5 miles of your front door here:

Find collective action near you here

https://www.antidotelive.studio/near-you

The five steps to action are:

Step 1: Find the others:

• This is about finding the small number of other people near you who want to create change, and shifting the locus of power from Westminster to the kitchen table. We often think we need lots of people and great skills to create big change, but the examples we cover prove you really just need around 8 - 12 people to create big change, and things often start by meeting up around a kitchen table, or over a cup of tea. From there things ‘build at the speed of trust’.

Step 2: Ask What Everyone Wants:

• A remarkable thing about the projects we’ve covered is the scale at which they’ve asked everyone in the community what they want. In Lawrence Weston, 3500 doors were knocked on to ask 3 questions. In Carrickfergus, 10,000 postcards were delivered asking what people wanted to change in the area. Instead of deciding on a problem and pushing a solution, the core group engages with the broader community to listen and understand what they want. And this enquiry benefited from a positive framing - asking what positive change people wanted to see, and thinking what could be built on assets already there. As Cormac Russell says - focus on what is “strong” in your community rather than just what is “wrong,” and invite others to dream and imagine a future they want to live in.

Step 3: Build Your Vision and Know Your Values:

• Define a clear vision and set of shared values for your group. These act as a “compass” or protective framework that keeps the group cohesive, resilient, and aligned when making decisions or facing disagreements later on.

Step 4: Decide on a Thing to Do:

• Commit to taking tangible, real-world action. This is the moment of commitment where the abstract becomes concrete. You don’t need to start with the biggest idea; starting with something manageable helps build confidence, demonstrate effectiveness, and create a “snowball effect” of engagement.

Step 5: Trust Yourselves & feel the joy:

• There’s no single “right” way to do this. By building relationships, doing the trust building work, and engaging with your community, your project builds support. Even if you feel like you’re “building the ship as you sail it,” trusting your collective instincts is more powerful than any top-down approach - as every context is different. You will know how to create change in your place better than anyone from outside.

Inspired? Check out what’s happening near you?

Communities are already coming together all around us. Use our postcode search tool to find 5 examples of systemically change making collective action within 5 miles of your front door here:

Find action near you here

https://www.antidotelive.studio/near-you

…and check out other folks talking about how collective action can lead to real change, including Jessica Friday, ACTIONISM, and Michael Mezz.

We also hear from brilliant economist Kate Raworth on how the approach CIVIC SQUARE are taking could work for neighbourhoods everywhere. We explore how a new economic reality, in which resources are managed with care, and finance flows back into our communities - not out of them - would result.

This episode tells the story of their decade plus journey from exploring what the community need, to building a successful hub, only to have it priced out of existence by extractive landlords, right up to the step change brought by their recently aquired land, owned in perpetuity by the community, to build their new neighbourhood public square.

Podcast trailer here:

Listen here:

Apple:

Listen on Apple HERE

Spotify:

Inspired? Check out what’s happening near you?

And when you’re done, use our postcode search tool to find 5 examples of systemically change making collective action within 5 miles of your front door here:

Find action near you here

https://www.antidotelive.studio/near-you

…and check out other folks talking about how collective action can lead to real change, including Jessica Friday and Michael Mezz.

Next week: Episode 5…

…in which we’ll visit both Grimsby and Hull, to discover part of the growing movement to build real democracy on the ground, by taking decision making into local hands - as we visit East Marsh United, and Co-operation Hull, and speak to Oli Whittington from Our House about the growing charter movement to reboot how politics works from the ground up.

20 years ago 8000 people came together to buy Fordhall Farm in Shropshire via £50 shares, and they’ve been running it as joint landlords ever since - winning multiple awards for their food and sustainability along the way.

In the episode Maryam Pasha and I hear from Charlotte Hollins about how she and her brother crowd funded their farm from the jaws of commercial capture, and how this model is now growing to create a wave of farms moving into collective ownership across the country.

Video trailer here:

Then Sue Pritchard of the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission helps us understand how that could fit with a thriving viable future for food and farming in the UK.

As Sue says: “politicians forget, businesses forget that farmers are also rooted in their communities. They want to know how they can contribute to the, the financial health, the wellbeing, the prosperity of the whole of the community.”

She then goes on to reference the UK RI funded Agriculture for Net Zero roadmap which unpacks how the approach fordhall have demonstrated can play into a “future of farming that makes farming more resilient, more sustainable, that tackles the climate crisis, the nature crisis, and provides more healthy food for all of us.” - you can check out the roapmap here: https://www.agrifood4netzero.net/our-work/the-roadmap/

So stick the kettle on and take a listen here:

Apple:

Spotify:

Want to support this?:

If you want help join this movement - you can still buy shared in Fordhall Community Land Initiative - the organisation who’re looking to expand this model across the UK here:

Buy a share

Inspired? Check out what’s happening near you?

And when you’re done, use our postcode search tool to find 5 examples of systemically change making collective action within 5 miles of your front door here:

Find action near you here

…and check out other folks talking about how collective action can lead to real change, including Jessica Friday and Michael Mezz.

Next week: Episode 4…

Next week we’ll visit Birmingham, where CIVIC SQUARE are creating a neighbourhood fit for the actual future we face, demonstrating new ways to retrofit our homes, create energy and food, and access land that can be held in perpetuity to allow all of this to happen with resilience.

As we tour the UK hearing from communities who’re demonstrating ways we can collectively organise around our basic needs - we head to Carrick Greengrocers in Northern Ireland and hear from Lee Robb about how it got started, and Jon Alexander on how this idea can spread.

And if our first episode left you slightly awed by the scale of what Ambition Lawrence Weston have achieved (check it out if you haven’t heard it), what the community in Carrick Fergus have done manages to show how possible it is to create change in our food systems.

Here’s a trailer:

Carrick’s crowd funded, community owned greengrocers stocking locally grown produce has rebooted their high street, reconnected people with food and farming, and in this moment where international supply chains are being disrupted by international conflicts, Carrick Greengrocer might be the blueprint more of us need to hear about.

Not only that - the small local change has created national ripples as national food policy is starting to take notice. As Lee Robb says:

Listen here:

…on Apple and Spotify »

So grab a brew and prepare to be inspired by the story of Carrick Greengrocers.

When you’ve listened, find collective action near you:

And when you’re done, use our postcode search tool to find 5 examples of systemically change making collective action within 5 miles of your front door:

Use our postcode search tool

https://www.antidotelive.studio/near-you

…and check out other folks talking about how collective action can lead to real change, including and .

Next week: Episode 3…

Next week we’ll dive into a story I’ve mentioned on here before - as we learn HOW 8000 strangers came together to collectively buy a farm in Shropshire, and have been running it for 20 years this year, proving the community owned farming can work great for food, farmers, nature and local people - AND how the model is set to spread! 🥗 💪 🙌

Brian Eno has called it:

Each episode myself, Maryam Pasha and producer Jess Lyne De Ver, visit an ordinary community doing something extraordinary - that demonstrates a better way we could all live and address vital needs we all share - affordable energy, locally connected food, community centred farming, energy efficient housing and democracy that actually gives ordinary people a voice - and then explores with an expert what the nation could look like if that idea was rolled out everywhere.

We visited CIVIC SQUARE, Fordhall farm, Co-operation Hull, East Marsh United, Carrick Greengrocers, and Ambition Lawrence Weston.

All six episodes are out, but I’ve not had time to post here so for the next six weeks I’ll introduce an episode a week and give you a bit of behind the scenes info on each one as we go. Here’s the trailer - links to the podcast are below.

EPISODE 1: LET’S BUILD OUR OWN HOPE & POWER:

In Episode 1, we visit Ambition Lawrence Weston in Bristol. We hear from Mark Pepper and Donna Sealey about how they and their community of 3500 houses got fed up with their area being run down, and decided to do something about it, so knocked on 3500 doors and asked 3 questions:

• What do you like about living in Lawrence Weston?

• What do you not like?

• What would you like to change?

By listening to their community, they created a neighbourhood development plan and then started putting that into action.

Since then they’ve managed to extract themselves from being a food desert by bringing a supermarket to the area, rewritten their local housing policy so it’s illegal to build homes with gas boilers, or without electric car charging points and top notch insulation…

…and then built the biggest wind turbine in England, which is 100% community owned and nets them £100k a year.

In the podcast we hear more about what they’ve managed to achieve, but also HOW.

+ Immediate: To mainstream these stories…

To create this podcast we partnered with mainstream media company Immediate, who’ve been fantastic collaborators, and are sharing the results with the listeners of their existing hugely successful podcasts - from Radio Times, to Gardeners World, Good Food and History Extra.

LISTEN the podcast here - and please share with anyone who needs a little practical hope:

Apple:

Spotify:

If you’re inspired to get active

… we’ve also built a postcode search tool (UK only at moment) to help you find 5 examples of systemically change making collective action within 5 miles of your house. Give it a spin here:

Find projects near you here

And let us know what you think! We believe these kinds of stories, of how collectively we can transform our reality for the better, can help more folks avoid the hopelessness that is an understandable response to what’s called “the news”, and give us a more practical vision of a future that actually works for the majority.

Your feedback and support can really help us do that!

Tell us what you think here!

Collective action is the ANTIDOTE to overwhelm:

This podcast is the culmination of the ANTIDOTE project so far, which aims to share exciting empowering stories that practically demonstrate how together we can create a new reality: a future that’s more affordable, equitable and sustainable.

We’ve developed a repeatable framework that tells these stories in ways that help us all see how we can extract ourselves from the lie we’re all told - that we can’t change things.

Actually - as these examples show - together we can change everything.

This work ties in with that of many other great creators on here including , , and many more. Check them out too.

Next week: Episode 2…

Next week we’ll learn how a community in Northern Ireland rebooted their high street AND connected their community back to local food at the same time - in episode 2 - “Let’s do food differently” 🥗 💪 🙌

Podcast Credits:

Produced by: ANTIDOTE & Immediate
Hosts: Maryam Pasha & Matt Golding
Produced, Directed, Written by: Matt Golding & Jess Lyne De Ver
Line producer & Editor: Alex Shand
Executive Producers @ Immediate: Michelle Whitehead & Ben Youatt
Additional Editing: Kristen Munoz
Sound Mix: Steve Rafter @ Bomo Audio

Want to become a farmer without getting your hands dirty?

OR with getting your hands dirty!?

This opportunity starts with a story we’ve covered before on ANTIDOTE - the inspirational Fordhall Farm in Shropshire, which is co-owned by a trust of over 8000 ordinary people who rescued it from takeover by big agriculture. This year they celebrate 20 years of proving that farming without chemicals whilst caring for the soil and the local community is viable (and even award winning!).

Now, other farmers have started to come forward, inspired by what they’ve demonstrated can work.

And in some AMAZING news - one such farmer, Andy Bragg - from West Town Farm in Devon - has done something beautiful and GIVEN his farm to Fordhall Community Land Initiative.

Check this out! 👇

This means Fordhall, and its’ growing group of over 8000 shareholders will now collectively own TWO farms - both of which are being run for people, not profit.

(you can join in by buying a £50 share today)

And others are curious - as the film above shows.

Farmers have historically been deeply rooted in their communities.

The question bubbling up now is how many feel a greater drive to preserve the legacy of their land and contribute to their community, than they do to cash out?

This could be the start of a movement into collective ownership, which could improve SO many things, including:

• Access to quality food

• Re-building local communities

• Decreasing climate chaos

• Improving support of, and connection to nature

…and it’s important, as access to land is under threat.

As Mark Twain (apparently) said “buy land, they’re not making it anymore”, and this message has definitely reached the investment class - who’ve been buying it up like billy-o.

Land is vitally important to our ability to create a future that works for all. Almost all of the collective action projects we’re featuring on ANTIDOTE require access to land - from community energy, to housing, to food. Even those we’ve spoken to from participative democracy projects speak passionately about the need for spaces to meet.

Around 63% of the UK is made up of farmland, which we obviously all depend on for food, but when it’s snapped up by investment portfolios there’s a higher chance of it being sold for development to maximise purely financial returns.

So this move to community ownership offers a vital pushback.

Once land is rescued into community ownership, it can exist in perpetuity outside of this “profit above all else” system, and instead prioritise resilience of food, a stable natural world, and local communities.

So…fancy becoming a farmer?

…or more accurately a co-owner of farmland run for community benefit? The potential is huge!

Right now the easiest way to join in is to become a shareholder in Fordhall - which…

👉 you can do here 👈

…but this is the beginning of a bigger conversation where multiple projects could kickstart a much bigger transfer of land from private portfolios, to our own public portfolio of mutually beneficial land.

So let us know in the chat - and let’s get this conversation going!

(*…and Northern Ireland, and anywhere else on Earth! but alliteration y’all!)

Everyone has a take on why society is screwed and what we can do about it.

Perhaps this is just another one.

But it comes from a place of deeper curiosity.

I believe Collective Creativity is our species Killer App. So how can we communicate with each other to access more of it?

We know we’re all more alike than we are different. I think it’s fair to say we can see difference being exaggerated - either out of thoughtlessness, or out of strategy, to gain attention and to weaken our collective power. As Gary Stevenson says “The billionaire-owned right-wing media is intentionally driving hatred and division amongst the working classes, amongst the public. They’re doing it on purpose.“

But also more fundamentally some of our most widely used communications techniques model distrust. Here are three ways we believe kinder communications can work better:

1: Assume care exists but routes to action are lacking (rather than the other way around):

When we explain the problems of the world to each other and try and use techniques to make each other care, we normalise the idea that the people we’re speaking to don’t already care. We sow another seed of mistrust on each other purely in approaching things as if care needed coercion.

More specifically (and commonly) when we assume that it’s information that other people lack to create the care needed to change their behaviour, we assume that they know how to act but either don’t want to, or don’t know why they should. And to add salt to that wound we assume they lack information whilst we don’t.

My experience of people doesn’t match that. I see more evidence of people who care, and know why they want to act, but don’t know that others feel the same, and more importantly - in a crazily complex world - don’t know what they could do to make a difference. They don’t lack care, they lack ways or means to turn that care into action.

By speaking to people assuming care and a desire to act, but providing a HOW, we at least avoid assuming a lack of those things in how we frame our message and having a part of our approach work against our goals.

We assume trust and kindness to get trust and kindness.

2: Be honest about, and use, your own doubts:

We can also reflect this compassion by bringing more honesty to how we frame debates.

We often come at discussions trumpeting our point of view and with a complete disregard for the alternative position. If we’re honest with ourselves, a different us, with a different hand of luck, set of living conditions, and experiences might not only connect with the alternative position to the one we hold, but even hold and believe it.

Connecting with that part of ourselves and having compassion and empathy for it allows us to approach our communications differently.

Not with strident forthright assertion that our point is right and anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot. But with the recognition that anyone may rationally and even morally hold an alternative position - and in fact there are probably times in our lives, or small parts of ourselves today, that do.

This sounds so basic when I say it like this. So why is it so rare right now?

One trick we use to try and force ourselves to bring this respect and compassion to our communications is as follows: We speak as if the person who holds the alternative perspective is not another separate human, but a doubting part of ourselves.

It tends to make our phrasing kinder. Video on this here 👇

3: Listen more than talk:

This is an obvious one, and very hard to do when you feel passionately about something.

Often progressive communications set out trying to explain an entire scientific rational before we’ve built a bridge of shared understanding with the person or audience we’re talking to. At it’s most extreme this can feel like we’re saying ‘I won’t connect with you until you catch up with me’ (and assumes we’re ahead). Instead of building a bridge of shared understanding from which to have a two way dialogue and align with each other.

Collective Creativity is our species Killer App 💪

When we come together, and create together, we create amazing things. That’s how we have become such a dominant species on this planet in the first place. We do need to learn how to reign in our desires and actions so that we don’t destroy the planet on which we depend, but creativity will be part of that - and we’re incredible when we act creatively together.

We need to find ways to find that common ground and build together. This podcast takes a powerful approach to bridge building (and made me flat out cry in the middle). Thanks for the recommend 💪 and to for the wisdom in it 👇

The Positive Echo

Undividing

Having followed Karl’s writing for a few months, and after a couple of great Zoom chats, I knew this was going to be a blockbuster episode. I wasn’t disappointed, and I know you won’t be either…

Listen now

a year ago · 4 likes · Gary Coulton and Karl Dunn

Through ANTIDOTE we’re trying to renormalise these deep true norms through what we assume of each other, and how we speak to each other, to pull out the best of us, not to assume the worst.

When we approach discussions and communications in this way - we find most people aren’t that divided after all. In fact most people, in a big picture sense, want the same things (a safe, affordable, connected life in community) and tend to want to find common ground to get there.

When we start from there, its much easier to see how we can work through this narrative division we’re surround with, and how the majority of humans are already on board with working collectively to create a world that works.

Follow ANTIDOTE here:
Instagram 👉 https://www.instagram.com/antidotelive/
TikTok 👉 https://www.tiktok.com/@antidote_live
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Demonstration is about showing, by building bits of it - what we want the world to be like - to work out the answer ourselves, and to share that working vision with others (as opposed to resisting the world we’re being offered).

At minimum this can push more traditional power holders into action - as they can no longer say there is no other way than the status quo.

At maximum, it can change the very system it seeks to offer an alternative to. If something much better is demonstrated, why doesn’t everyone start doing it?

The Sunrise movement in Taiwan is a great example of the power of demonstration. Here’s a video of Audrey Tang talking to Jon Alexander about the amazing collective effort which revived citizen engagement with, participation in and trust of the political process of running Taiwan:

👆Audrey Tang in conversation with at The Conduit Club: There’s so much richness in this interview.

”We like to say that we’re not protestors - we’re demonstrators."

There’s a great podcast interview with Audrey Tang speaking to Nate Hagens here on the same subject 👈

What are the benefits?

• By trying things we learn, create solutions, and empower ourselves with skills and community.

• When we’ve created something new that we and others can see working, it’s easier to convince each other of the possibility and harder for others to claim it can’t work.

• It’s much easier for us to ask for support trying to do something constructive, than to demand those in power change something themselves, and when we face the challenge of trying, it tends to make us more pragmatic, both of which make collaborating with parts of the existing system (where necessary) easier.

As Mark Pepper from Ambition Lawrence Weston says: “It took us a long time to realise that we needed to compromise, and we couldn’t get everything we wanted, but in the same breath, building up those relationships with those decision makers that we had to like the land owners, the local authority, we needed to learn how to behave a little bit better because before when we were faced with the local authority we’d just criticise them, wouldn’t understand the pressures and issues they were under. By trying to help them hit their targets, they’ll help us hit our targets”

The true power: This is the way to prevent authoritarian overreach:

As Michael Mezzatesta outlines here - lack of visible alternatives also helps the rise of authoritarian political parties and regimes. It’s much easier to argue for retrenchment to past norms or doubling down on old tropes when the new alternatives are either intangible or invisible.

And as movement builder Marshall Ganz says in this interview with the Stanford Innovations Review: “Unless you’re building at the same time as you’re fighting, you end up with nothing”

These demonstrations are all around us:

ANTIDOTE is a project born out of exploring how we make these demonstrations more compelling, and more visible, using storytelling. We’ve filtered 8 of the most impactful demonstration stories happening across the UK - from Ambition Lawrence Weston taking power back into their own hands on the outskirts of Bristol with phenomenal results, to CIVIC SQUARE demonstrating a neighbourhood of the future in Birmingham, to Fordhall Farm proving community owned chemical free farming can work for (almost) two decades in Shropshire - Chapeltown Co-Housing in Leeds, Carrick Greengrocers in Northern Ireland, Repowering London, Hastings Commons, Cooperation Hull and more.

So - more protests or more demonstrations?

Obviously we need both.

But right now protests are far more visible - both for people to participate in, and to hear about the results of - than demonstrations.

It might help us all see, imagine and act to create a future that works for the majority we could see more demonstrations.

Which is what ANTIDOTE is all about.

Follow ANTIDOTE here:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/antidotelive/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@antidote_live
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@antidote_live
Website: https://www.antidotelive.studio/

I recently visited to see co-ownership in action, on the day of their AGM.

The 8000 shareholders are members of ‘Fordhall Community Land Initiative’, overseen by Charlotte Hollins (daughter original tenant farmer Arthur Hollins) - and it’s this trust who rent the farm to Ben Hollins (son of the original tenant farmer) who farms the land.

The trust have given Ben a 100 year tenancy, meaning he’s empowered to think for the long term, and farm in ways that make the farm itself, its soil and its community healthier - with a goal of creating a farm and land are something to be proud to hand to future generations.

Their two decade legacy is proof that collective ownership can not only work, but be financially and socially sustainable in the long term. They even recently won Online Business of the Year for their farm shop!

During this year’s AGM an exciting discussion bubbled up. How can Fordhall help other land owners, farmers, communities, and us - the public - transition more land into community ownership?

Given the inequality that already exists in land ownership, and the financial speculation that has been growing as investors buy up even more of our countryside, this is a powerful possibility.

As Charlotte Hollins shares:

”We’re in a world where land is too expensive for people to enter the farming industry and pay that mortgage off on a farmers income, and we have ageing farmers who are asset rich, cash poor and care desperately about passing their land on to the next generation.

Is community ownership a model that can bridge this gap? Farmers are already talking to Fordhall about this very question.”

As the Fordhall shareholders debated how to offer support to both communities and landowners interested in this approach, more potential opened up.

Back to Charlotte:

”Inspired by our success at Fordhall, there’s the potential that another farm could become available to us... and others are asking questions. How do they safeguard their land? How do they retain its organic status? How do they provide opportunities for others when they are gone and they don't have family members who wish to take land on?”

How big is this opportunity to connect land owners considering their legacy, with community ownership tied to true land stewardship - to offer an alternative to cashing out for ageing farmers, and instead offer them a route to protecting what they’ve created and cared for?

Land is key to a lot of community action - whether to grow food, to generate community owned renewable energy, or to create space for a community to connect with the land, and each other.

This conversation is emerging right now - but from our side we thought we’d start by asking you - the ANTIDOTE audience - would you be interested in chipping in to collectively own some land that could then be managed for good?

Let us know in the comments ✨

How about doing it together and sharing practical tips to make it work in your life?

Like how do you go back to buying books when they don’t arrive the next day? Or where do you buy birthday presents when you’ve…forgotten to order them in time..

…and building some community around it whilst we go?

Recent statista data shows the average UK household seems to spend between £600 and £1200 a year on Amazon (and that’s before you get to Audible, Prime TV, Twitch, Wholefoods etc). There are over 300 people subscribed to this newsletter. If 1/3rd of us pledged to swear off Amazon for a year, we could shift around £100k out of a future that ends in (‘oxygen scarce’) Space, to a future that could reimagine what we have here on (oxygen rich) earth. 

As precedent, short stints of Amazon escaping have been happening in the states, but this is about making it possible permanently.

Incase you need any reminding of the motivation: Jeff Bezos thinks his 1.5 million workers should exist in a perpetual state of terror to enrich him, presumably so he can reclaim the title of richest man on earth from Elon Musk, and beat him in the race to have us all live in 1 mile long pods in space. And every pound / dollar / breadcrumb we give him fuels this vision.

More than the money we’d take off Besoz (he’ll barely notice) - it’s’ about the good that would come from the money that’s put into other things.

Imagine if we put £100k into buying presents from local shops, buying books from actual retailers where we can get to know the staff, and buying electronics from places that pay their taxes?

What could that £100k a year do to create a more positive, less “spacey” and more “let’s live here on earth where it’s beautiful and full of great people” world?

This isn’t about being perfect, and we know there are some things for price, medical or other reasons that some of us might find impossible to shift. There is no shame in imperfection. This is more about asking the question 👇

What world could we help build more of with the money we’d otherwise bung to Bezos?

Plus it’ll give us all tips to share with others who’re curious if they can do this too.

Want in? Scan the QR code below or click the link here to join. (Or click button to tell us you’d rather we used Signal)

Join 'Escape the Amazon' here

* NOTE: I’m aware of the irony of using Whatsapp to escape Amazon. If there’s a preference for Signal we will switch to there. Fewer people use Signal as their daily driver though - so we’re prepared to embrace the irony unless you tell us you’d rather we didn’t in enough numbers 👍

Unfortunately that does run the risk of making change feel overwhelming. If it feels impossible - on top of paying the bills / feeding the kids / surviving - to build a wind turbine like the folks in Lawrence Weston, or buy your own farm like the community in Fordhall - can you really join in?

One of the things we keep learning is almost all of these project start small, often over a cup of tea*

*or a pint, or some food

Start small and human scale

In a moment where the big systems that we’ve idolised for decades are fracturing, it’s inspiring that these projects started at a much more human scale. Whilst they’ve all achieved big things - from crowdfunding a locally stocked greengrocer and then influencing national food policy in Carrickfergus, to getting all of the boroughs of Hull to co-create a better future - they started much more down to earth:

• Carrickfergus greengrocers started with a handful of residents coming together over a meal cooked by 14 volunteers in the village hall, which revealed a collective frustration at overpriced flavourless food, and a desire to re-establish the greengrocer that used to exist on their high-street - but tied to local farming that helped the soil.

• Ambition Lawrence Weston started with a handful of residents frustrated at the demise of local services, deciding to door knock every house in the area and ask what they really wanted from the area - and start building it.

• Cooperation Hull pivot all of their activities around their weekly “Waffle” events - with free food to catalyse community and conversation about what they hope for from the Hull of the future.

Got a kettle? Change the world

The great lesson that has come out of the stories we’ve told so far is that, apart from time and energy, you only need three things to create big change:

• 1: A handful of people:

  It’s never one person - always a chance conversation between a small group, which then grows rapidly as conversation flows.
  

• 2: A shared frustration - and a creative way to overcome it:
  Change often comes when a few people identify the same problem, and decide to do something about it with creativity and imagination
  

• 3: A cup of tea / a pint of beer / some food:
  So many of the stories we’re telling have a moment where a few people decided to meet up for a chat over some food or drink - where an idea turned into a plan to ask more people and things snowballed.

Caring beats control:

It also makes sense because when people come together to take on an issue they care about, they’re more likely to commit with creativity, determination and and irrepressible energy than they are when change is forced on them from outside.

There’s a reason change brewed up over a cuppa by people caring about the same thing probably sticks more easily than change cooked up in a board room or cabinet room and pushed on the public.

If energy can be unlocked, and skills pooled, the resulting change can be huge - as the projects we’re sharing show.

Good ideas spread:

And collective action can lead to systemic change when some of the ideas that communities create work out well enough they inspire others to repeat and replicate them.

Currently just over 1% of the UK energy system is powered by community owned energy generators, but in Germany that figure is 20%.

Small groups can generate big ideas, and big ideas can spread.

So?

Have access to 2 other people, a shared frustration and a kettle? GREAT. You have the key ingredients you need to change the world…..

…as change inevitably starts small, and personal. As Immy Kaur puts it at the end of this film about Civic Square creating a neighbourhood fit for the future in Birmingham - “If you want to create change…

…put the kettle on!” 💪

WOW 2025 is a lot! Every year I look back and part of me wishes I could return to the last calmer year.

But the more the systems we depend on fracture, the more appetite there is to create alternatives. Through the stories we’re sharing via ANTIDOTE - we’re aware of this rising thirst. We’ll share more of what we’re learning in future posts.

One thing we’re being asked is what can be done to support this growth in collective power that’s emerging now. We’re working on a series of content that is more in the “how to” vein sharing stories of how the projects we’ve already covered came to be. But until that’s ready 3 ideas are:

1: Keep our money out of the broken systems and put it into better ones

2: Shout about the better systems

3: Join the better systems

None of these are easy but the reasons to support these projects that demonstrate the future we could all benefit from are growing all around us.

1: Keep money out of broken systems and put it into better ones: 

Appetite for divesting from at least the worst of what’s unfolding is growing. How can we focus that money into things that will create more common sense and less chaos? Below are some links to ways to support the communities we’ve featured so far, as well as some other tips from others on shifting our support and spending:

• Cooperation Hull are crowdfunding here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/hull-assembly

• Newham Community Energy - part of Repowering London - have a share offer open here.

• You can buy a share in Fordhall Community Farm here or support a new similar plan to save Babbinswood farm here.

• The rising boycott movement in the states is offering a vision of what could work.

• Gillian Burke is podcasting about her attempts to “Quiet Quit Capitalism” here.

• YKReborn on Insta are doing a series on De-googling your life (not easy!)

• Feel free to share any tips threads you’re finding useful and we’ll post them here.

• We’ve got an idea to try building community around this - Stay tuned for more in the next few weeks! 💪

And just as important is what we start supporting to redirect our money more positively, so to….

2: Shout about better systems: 

However hard we push back against the crazy, corrupt and counterproductive systems we’re living with, we won’t create positive alternatives without demonstrating what they look like and proving they work - so it’s vital we make a noise about better systems that are emerging. 

ANTIDOTE is one attempt to do this - and we’ve reached over 4500 subscribers and are gearing up for a phase 2 - tightening our storytelling and going more mainstream (exploring radio, podcasting, TV, and music festivals).

But how else can we amplify the world that could become, rather than the world that we’re being given? We’re all ears for ideas - whether ones we can build into our next steps with ANTIDOTE - or that we can support via others 💪

And the more we hear about these things, the more likely we are to want to….

3: Join in: 

We’re looking next to answer the growing desire for a different world with content that breaks down (through interviews, podcasts and webinars) HOW communities are coming together to create change at a local level.

Not all of us have the luxury of time or money to build bits of a better world, but for anyone who can- how can we make it easier by sharing what’s worked for those already doing it?

Currently we’re planning:

• A podcast, video series and blog posts here about how these projects got started

• An interactive map that allows you to find systemically powerful collective action near you by entering your postcode.

What else could make this easier for you? (apart from an extra 3 hours in every day 🤪)?

Inspire → Tool up → Get started : It’s time to organise

As the world fragments, the opportunity to harness a growing frustration and use it to fuel demonstration of better ways of being grows.

Let’s grab that opportunity with both hands. Please share any ideas, stories or requests with us as we gear up to showcase more collective action that’s already working - and the future it can unlock if more of a join in.

I’ll sign off with a little joy from my current instagram pick me up Endangerhood

💪THANKS FOR BEING PART OF THE GROWING COMMUNITY💪

The future we need is always going to come from regular people coming together to face up to the biggest challenges of our time with determination and creativity, rather than irregular people building pseudo-neighbourhoods on Mars 🪐 … so we’ve created Antidote - a storytelling platform to tell these stories.

👇 PLEASE FOLLOW US HERE 👇

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/antidotelive/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@antidote_live/videos
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@antidote_live
BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/antidotelive.bsky.social
Website: https://www.antidotelive.studio/

We aim to share the positivity that’s already happening all around us, created by people like us. People without deep pockets or positions of power to work from. But with a sense of imagination about the future they want to live in, a sense of community about how to work together to build it…and who won’t take no for an answer.

Here’s a taster, featuring the amazing Rachel Donald from :

There are 4 asks of you in relation to this project - if you’re game?  

1: Follow us and use these films as a prompt to spend little bits of time imagining the future you want to live in. These stories are intended as inspiration to collectively build that muscle. As many people have said, we can’t build a future we can’t imagine. 

2: Tell us what you think? - like all of the projects we feature - this project is itself an experiment - An imperfect attempt to fill a gap we can see by sharing stories we think are under-represented in our media. We’re intentionally trying a few approaches from authenticity to humour to punchy shortform clips. Tell us what’s working for you and why, and what isn’t? Share these with your friends and tell us what they think (or get them to tell us directly!)

3: Let us know if you have either advice, or stories you want us to share. Our ears are open!

4: If you think what we’re doing is useful, please let any funders know as once this first batch of content is out and we’ve learned what’s connecting, we’re looking to scale, by refining our social content model, and then taking the best of these stories into deeper and longer form platforms. 

So that’s it…

…follow antidote, and let us know what you think as we slowly bombard you with positivity over the next few months 💪🌍🙌

Thank you!

A lot of you have asked what this could look like, so I thought I’d share some of our tests.

These aren’t final films, and they lack graphics and a final call to action, but they should convey a tone / approach, and feedback is very welcome!

(and props to the amazing Rachel Donald who’s been a stellar collaborator on this, on top of her normal day job being an incredible climate corruption journalist and world class podcaster at Planet Critical).

1: How to tell your energy company to get F*cked: *(raw edit - no graphics)

2: The biggest wind turbine in England: *(raw edit - no graphics)

3: Plot Twist!: Good News from Northern Ireland: *(raw edit - no graphics)

4: Carrick Greengrocers: A rough test capturing a community story from Northern Ireland (shot over Zoom with the amazing Lee Robb): 

5: Ambition Lawrence Weston - in their own words (raw edit - no graphics): Featuring Mark Pepper from Ambition Lawrence Weston:

These are rough & raw experiments. We’re learning as we go by creating content and sharing it with people like you! (and running it through academic testing).

Academic testing results: 

Professor Colin Davis at the University of Bristol has run our earlier tests through Randomised Control Trial testing with the following results:

After watching these types of films online audiences reported:

• 87% felt the example could make a significant difference to tackling social issues

• 67% felt they could make a personal difference through projects like this

• 66% would share this content with friends

• 62% would get involved themselves

Who are “we”?

The core team working on this at Rubber Republic is myself (Matt Golding), Creative Producer and Editor Alex Shand and Producer Lauren Jeffrey, and we’re working in deep collaboration with the wonderful Rachel Donald, and the wise and lucid Paddy Loughman. 

We’re supported by a broader team including Nicky Hawkins, Dadirai Tsopo, Chris MacCartney @ Transition Networks, Lucy Holdaway and Jodie Bond @ Local Storytelling Exchange, Cassie Robinson, Sophia Parker, Iris Andrews, Ella Saltmarshe, Charlotte Sewell & of course Professor Colin Davis (Chair of Cognitive Psychology @ University of Bristol) plus a wider team of storytelling experts and supporters and funding from Gower Street & the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Roadmap forward?:

• We’ve got pilot funding from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to launch a hub and channel for this type of storytelling in Autumn 2024.

• We’re working with 8 community groups on the ground to apply the thinking so far to their own storytelling and also evolving the tests above to put content out to gauge audience response: - do people want to hear more stories of how people like them are reshaping their worlds and how they could potentially do it too?
  

• We’re collaborating with 3 influencers to see how their audiences respond to these types of stories.

• We’re connecting with others in the space to create an ecosystem approach to getting this work out there - with Transition Networks, the Local Storytelling Exchange, JRF, Jon Alexander, Climate Outreach, the Climate Coalition, Andy Middleton @ One Way How, the Climate Majority Project and other influencers.

• Our goal is to create an ecosystem that could produce and amplify this kind of storytelling with coordination at scale. 

Let us know what you think?

We’re sharing this to make our process more open. Do shout if you love / hate / think we can improve what we’re doing!

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One of the things I hear frequently is that we need more “political leadership”.

So that term has been banging around my head for the last year. Political. Leadership.

If leadership means taking a stand for something you believe will take us in a better direction, but politicians (at least at the national level) decide what to say by first polling to check whether it'll make us vote for them (or more pivotally whether their funders demand it), is that really leadership?

If they aren’t leading, they aren’t leaders. 

Maybe we’re looking in the wrong place? We need politicians to step up and lead within the parameters they can, and whilst some are, whether down to vested interests, or lack of vision, many aren’t. 

But whilst politicians can support, legislate for and normalise new ideas, significant innovations (for example the origins of the NHS) have often come from pioneering people who’s ideas are then spread by politicians.

What we need right now is leadership as a creative act. 

When systems are breaking or in need of shifting, we need people who're prepared to step into new spaces outside of traditional structures and imagine better ways of doing things. Those who’ve understood the challenges we face and are responding with practicality and creativity.

So where are they?

When you look for them, they’re everywhere, but they’re pretty invisible in mainstream culture. 

An entirely different, better future is already emerging in leadership work happening all around us - often connected to place. 

Some examples:

• Middle Ground Growers in Bath - a group of young people taking healthy food and land matters into their own hands (literally) by regeneratively growing veg and delivering them to local doorsteps or businesses by e-bike.

• Civic Square in Birmingham, “exploring how to create and co-build neighbourhoods that are ecologically safe, socially just and climate-resilient” - doing incredible work to flesh out how equitable neighbourhoods of the future could function and feel.

• Bro Gwaun a wind turbine in West Wales, crowd sourced by local people fed up with high carbon energy options that send money into the pockets of oil companies, crowd sourced their own wind turbine (subsequently jointly backed by the local council, now generating funds for local projects and part of a growing international movement for local, collectively owned renewable power - what’s not to like?)

• Carrick Greengrocers in Northern Ireland, who decide that ongoing fear of paramilitaries and monuments to tanks weren’t the right image for their town so became part of a growing movement to reshape our food and farming, and smashed their funding target when they offered locals a greengrocer selling locally regeneratively grown food. 

• Fordhall Organic Farm in Shropshire who crowd sourced money to buy their tenant farm out from under the feet of big agriculture and turn it into a community owned agroecological proof of what’s possible - sharing with, and learning from others doing similar things across the country and world. 

• Cooperation Hull: A group who’ve come together to try and put into practice a different way of bringing people powered politics to Hull - see their video here »

There are so many of these stories - this is just a fraction of what’s happening.

We don’t need another hero:

As Tina Turner said*, this isn’t about focussing attention on individuals - as the real innovation for new ideas that could create better ways for us to live collectively, are unsurprisingly happening collectively.

*(I’m pretty sure this is what she meant - songs require synthesis but I imagine if she were writing a substack post…)

All of these projects are led by groups taking matters into their own hands, gathering momentum to make things happen, and they prove that together is the way to build the future we need. 

Rather than asking for permission or policy from government, they’re building the world they want to see now.

They’re taking back control of our future.

Some of these leaders are consciously networked together, listening to each other, and creating a constellation of movements, generating exciting momentum that could reshape how we feed ourselves, build and power our homes and businesses, commute, and run our democratic processes.

People are getting practical with tasks that could genuinely change the world. 

Seeing and feeling these movements is increasingly vital if we are to harness more energy to join them, and to prevent that appetite for change being harnessed by more regressive thinking. If we don’t tell the stories of where real people want to go, we leave the door open for charlatans with false stories and false solutions.

Leaders gonna lead. Politicians gonna help:

With our work on Storytelling for a better future, we’re looking to create a shift to:

• Recognise and spotlight the true leadership work being done in communities and startups across the country and world

• Frame politicians as potentially helpful partners, advocates and flame fanners of this creative work

…with the hope that…

• Awareness is raised of the widespread, possibility generating leadership work already happening, giving people more routes to shape their own futures by getting involved

…and…

• Politicians may find it easier to support a more visible and growing movement, and will have greater legitimacy to get it championed, regulated for, and backed by policy (if vested interests aren’t at play, but that’s another story). 

…so together leaders and politicians can accelerate the world that’s possible into being.

So what can we do? Storytellers gotta step up!

We’ve built a society that rewards extractive behaviour. But other equally valid parts of human nature exist and are visible all around us. 

Storytelling has a huge role to play in deciding which aspects of ourselves and which possible futures we spotlight.

I believe it’s the duty of storytellers at this moment to start telling the stories of those who’re already leading the way (rather than focussing on those who aren’t, and even…can’t?). 

As if we don’t make visible the good that’s already happening, how do we expect others to see it, join in and build momentum?

Simply, how about we…

Step 1: Find the people, often in groups, who’re actually leading

Step 2: Tell other people about them - and make their stories more engaging and visible.

Step 3: Join them - and become part of them - because all of us can

We can work together to create the world we need, with whatever resources we can contribute to the collective pot. Let’s tell stories about the future being created, and the future we want. At minimum you can benefit from the hope that those you’re vainly looking to for leadership are not the leaders you’re looking for. 

Because the real leaders are all around us, if we look for them. 

But around the world growing numbers of people are coming together to challenge this seeming descent into oblivion, with innovative and potentially transformative ideas and projects -  from collective energy to agroecology to shared ownership and new economic models.

It seems that we’re brilliant at dramatising the terrible stories of unhinged individuals wreaking havoc,  but not so good at making exciting the more vital, often humble and multiple hero’s who could inspire hope and action in the direction we need. The stories are out there but they get little airtime beyond the dry functional headlines and the geekier end of the business pages.

Why? And how can we do our best to tell propositional stories that cut through? What are the narrative traits of positive, and collective action storytelling that connects to audiences? 

Our first steps:​

To explore this question I teamed with Cassie Robinson and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to bring together 10 practitioners who are already pioneering this space  to spend a little time pattern spotting and identifying what really works to create strong propositional stories rooted in a soil of interconnection, kindness and shared values. The amazing participants in this workshop were Jon Alexander, Anab Jain, Alice Sachradja, Paddy Loughman, Graham Leicester, Susan Krumdieck, Sepi Noohi, and Michelle Ong (from JRF)- and please do check out their work as they are all doing amazing things pushing forward in this space. We explored the following:

WHY: Understand the reasons our media works to prioritise amygdala bating headlines, but also the need people have for hopeful stories at this moment, and how and where they want to consume them?

WHAT: Pattern spot from the propositional stories that are cutting through, from movies, to community stories, to books, and from other cultures of storytelling who have taken a different path (from myths, to storytelling structures and techniques that exist elsewhere or in the past).

HOW: Identify elements of a narrative map for propositional storytelling so we can try and replicate, repeat and amplify the traits that seem to work.

Together we identified a series of traits that felt like they helped to create strong propositional stories and wrote them up in a “this not that” table to make them practically useable.

(Note - A shout out to this equally relevant guide Frameworks lists on page 26 of their narrative guide here).

The list so far:​

(for input / feedback / challenge) 

Why now?​

Negative stories are on the rise. If we don’t sharpen our positive-stories-tools, positive stories are gonna keep ending up in the attention graveyard.

I've spent 15 years creating viral films that reached large audiences through organic sharing. Whilst there were lots of techniques we used to come up with ideas, one of them was spotting the patterns of how other stories cut through and then adapting, playing with, and repeating the emotional or structural shapes that worked (but with our own, often wildly different stories).

We developed a lexicon and intuition for what cut-through and what didn’t, some of which remain helpful in this new context (eg surprising people with how kind normal people are)...

...  but many of which draw from our dominant storytelling culture of exceptional individuals conforming to competitive social norms. If you’ve ever tried to pitch a headline or story to a newspaper or online platform, or to create any kind of content that cuts through you may have found, like I have, that the most important stories we need to share right now (of kind, collective, clever community action) are quite hard to get traction for. 

And yet the human stories at the heart of these actions are amazing. 

Can we identify elements of narrative structures that help these kind of stories to cut through?

Fundamentally, the things we need to do in the world right now (act together rather than separately, act with nature rather than separate from it, act in harmony rather than in competition) all go against some of the key tenets of our underlying cultural story. All storytellers are taught techniques that tend to drive us towards more exceptional, more individual, more competitive stories, and if we don’t find and get more skilled at alternative narratives, the things we ask of society may change but the aspirations of the stories we create will not.

Change, in a society continually feeding itself stories with values contrary to that change*, is less likely to happen.

What next?​

If we can identify some traits that work for engaging visionary stories (propositional stories, not oppositional stories) and weave them into each of our work, can we strengthen not only the propositional stories we each tell, but also the resonance between them?

We’d love to connect with others on a similar exploration and are also very open to feedback, advice and builds. With greater alignment around “what works”, we hope we can accelerate uptake of stories that are vital to our future.

And as Paddy Loughman reminded me, it’s worth clarifying that what we’re exploring here, the story, is only half the story. Media ownership and control that has a vested interest in certain stories dominating is obviously also key. But hopefully having better ways to communicate the positive things that are already happening will make cut through in social media and on existing platforms more likely, or even make generating support for a less divisive news platform possible.

Is this of interest to you reading this, and does it feel like it could open doors in a beneficial way? Let us know. But we’re already exploring further.

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